So YOU'RE the reason there are shortages of fresh water in the developing world. Nice going.

Um, I can only take credit for water shortages which may or may not have occurred in central Indiana from the years roughly 1983-1997.

But seriously, those grenade shaped water balloons that could be filled humongous and broke easy. Man they were awesome.

Ha! the grocery store near me put a bunch of those up in clearance...I might have bought a few packs to target my roommates...

I remember the biggest biatch of them was filling them and getting them to the fight location without breaking them prematurely. And those little colored ones never liked to break and god damn that hurt getting hit with those.

I don't get how you could hate dodgeball. It was the "team sport" where you truly lived or died by your own sword for most the game. Obviously if one team was superior you were eventually farked because it would end up on 5 v 1 or something like that, but early on your ability to catch balls and nail other people was the sole thing that mattered.

If you can't at least make an effort to nail the biggest douchebag in your class with a ball, I have no respect for you as a person.

Dancin_In_Anson:ManateeGag: when I was growing up, dodge ball was hardly a team sport. there was no team work, no helping each other out. there was a lot of "every man for himself" on both sides of the line.

We played with tennis balls too. Nowadays I think they'd call in grief counselors to share our feelings about some of the bruising we took.

I brought this up in a conversation with a group of my old high school classmates last year. The catalyst was this article. Now, most of my classmates' kids are getting into the late teen age range but there are still a few who started late. My question was when did we become such shiatty parents where we were so overly concerned about our kids and why? When we were growing up, many of our Fathers were WWII and/or Korea vets. We were all but expected to get into fights, (get caught fighting in school you'd get hauled to the gym, put on gloves and headgear and duke it out until tired then get a swat or two and sent to class), get cuts and scrapes, break a bone or two and into mischief. You might get your ass kicked, some stitches, wince at Bactine's sting or wear a cast for a couple of months but it was all part of growing up. A standard reply when you thought you were wronged was 'life's not fair'.

I'm stunned at how parents (when they have parents but that's a whole 'nuther conversation) act towards their kids today. Everyone's a winner, there are no losers, call the cops when a couple of 13 year olds squab on the ball field after school...These parents are in their late 30s to late 40s...just about my age and down. What made them such pussies?

I can tell you what happened, Columbine. I was in middle school when that occurred, and the changes that took place practically overnight were huge. Prior to Columbine, I never saw a cop working security in a school, and when kids got into a fight, the worst punishment they would receive was detention. Post Columbine, there was always a cop in school, any fights would result in all participants being led out of the building in handcuffs. It just all rolled downhill from there.

It is without a doubt the most fun I have ever had playing sports. My fat teammates had fun too. There is this unspoken loyalty in every team. The athletic dudes protect the slow pokes and some even sacrifice themselves to expose the adversaries.

I say we need more dodgeball in schools.

/serious

to say I was nerdy growing up is an understatement. I was a tape-on-the-glasses, d&d playing geek. while other kids were behind the library smoking and making out, I was in the library reading. I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was a teenager.

and I loved dodge ball.

the idea that some people are anti-dodge ball is so foreign to me, I cannot relate to those people.

torture terrorist suspects? well, if it gets them talking. gays going to hell? not my interpretation of the Bible, but I'm no scholar. Obama really from Kenya? doubtful, but I wasn't in the delivery room. ban dodge ball? DIAF.

ha-ha-guy:Obviously if one team was superior you were eventually farked because it would end up on 5 v 1 or something like that, but early on your ability to catch balls and nail other people was the sole thing that mattered.

And when you're the last person you hang out toward the back and you avoid throws below your waist (harder to catch and if you f*ck up then you have less time to try to react) and try to catch anything you think you can get (which brings your whole damn team back into the game in some variations, otherwise returns someone else to the game in other variations, or at least gets that person out of the game in the short version of the game).

So YOU'RE the reason there are shortages of fresh water in the developing world. Nice going.

Um, I can only take credit for water shortages which may or may not have occurred in central Indiana from the years roughly 1983-1997.

But seriously, those grenade shaped water balloons that could be filled humongous and broke easy. Man they were awesome.

Ha! the grocery store near me put a bunch of those up in clearance...I might have bought a few packs to target my roommates...

I remember the biggest biatch of them was filling them and getting them to the fight location without breaking them prematurely. And those little colored ones never liked to break and god damn that hurt getting hit with those.

Oh yeah that was always the interesting part. Filling them up on the spigot was damn near Russian roulette. The necks always seemed to burst right as you were taking them off. I always liked how how you could tell where we played the most because the yard was much greener there.

spman:I can tell you what happened, Columbine. I was in middle school when that occurred, and the changes that took place practically overnight were huge. Prior to Columbine, I never saw a cop working security in a school, and when kids got into a fight, the worst punishment they would receive was detention. Post Columbine, there was always a cop in school, any fights would result i ...

Hmm. I was in college wen that happened. When I would fight in middle school (never fought in high school) the worst I got was a 3 day detention.

So YOU'RE the reason there are shortages of fresh water in the developing world. Nice going.

Um, I can only take credit for water shortages which may or may not have occurred in central Indiana from the years roughly 1983-1997.

But seriously, those grenade shaped water balloons that could be filled humongous and broke easy. Man they were awesome.

I know! Shhh, don't tell anyone, but I still fondly recall an epic, neighborhood-wide water fight when I was a kid in the 70's. Hoses blasting from the tree-house, wash-tubs stocked with those grenade balloons, it was glorious. But it was California, and when we had the droughts in '76 and '77 such things were forbidden forever.

We totally had hose fights too when we got older except one summer mom and dad were horrified to discover the water bill one month and we were banned from hose fights. They still let us play with squirt guns, water balloons and our slip and slide (and crocodile mile!). Of course, we used to ride our bikes a couple miles to the store and buy all this crap ourselves at the Ben Franklin with our allowance money. Super soakers changed the game forever. Kids these days aren't allowed to have any fun at all. We used to go creek stomping for miles and come home filthy and with whatever critters we found. We rode our bikes about 5 miles down the train tracks just to see where it went. We'd routinely ride our bikes across town which was something like 15 miles round trip. I was a little chunky, but nobody in our neighborhood was fat. Go figure.

I skipped a grade early on and was always a year younger than everyone else, and at the smaller end of the "within-normal-limits" scale to begin with. I sucked at basketball and still do. Not so good at baseball. Too small to be any use in football. I was mediocre at soccer. I was odd because I used "big words", so I was a target for bullies at school. Not the primary target, but one of opportunity.

I could climb the rope in the gym like a squirrel, though, and I excelled at the dodgeball because I was agile and fast. I was bullied out in the world, but in the dodgeball arena the bullies could not touch me.

So YOU'RE the reason there are shortages of fresh water in the developing world. Nice going.

Um, I can only take credit for water shortages which may or may not have occurred in central Indiana from the years roughly 1983-1997.

But seriously, those grenade shaped water balloons that could be filled humongous and broke easy. Man they were awesome.

Ha! the grocery store near me put a bunch of those up in clearance...I might have bought a few packs to target my roommates...

I remember the biggest biatch of them was filling them and getting them to the fight location without breaking them prematurely. And those little colored ones never liked to break and god damn that hurt getting hit with those.

Oh yeah that was always the interesting part. Filling them up on the spigot was damn near Russian roulette. The necks always seemed to burst right as you were taking them off. I always liked how how you could tell where we played the most because the yard was much greener there.

Damnit now I wish I lived closer to the nephew so I could buy some and nail him with them.

Moonfisher:Sucking at sports gets you teased and that makes the author of TFA weep. Let's make academics into a competition where everyone can demolish and belittle the stupid people. That should balance it out.

I still remember in 7th grade having to apologize to a classmate named Ralph whose feelings I'd hurt by calling him stupid, after he demonstrated how stupid he was in science class. The teachers had nothing to do with this, it was peer-level coercion. Popular/jock-ish kids without a hint of irony getting on my case for making him feel the sting of his shortcomings.

But you know what? For once it was just them doing the right thing. I didn't need to be picking on the simple minded.

pute kisses like a man:meat0918: Dancin_In_Anson: ManateeGag: when I was growing up, dodge ball was hardly a team sport. there was no team work, no helping each other out. there was a lot of "every man for himself" on both sides of the line.

We played with tennis balls too. Nowadays I think they'd call in grief counselors to share our feelings about some of the bruising we took.

I brought this up in a conversation with a group of my old high school classmates last year. The catalyst was this article. Now, most of my classmates' kids are getting into the late teen age range but there are still a few who started late. My question was when did we become such shiatty parents where we were so overly concerned about our kids and why? When we were growing up, many of our Fathers were WWII and/or Korea vets. We were all but expected to get into fights, (get caught fighting in school you'd get hauled to the gym, put on gloves and headgear and duke it out until tired then get a swat or two and sent to class), get cuts and scrapes, break a bone or two and into mischief. You might get your ass kicked, some stitches, wince at Bactine's sting or wear a cast for a couple of months but it was all part of growing up. A standard reply when you thought you were wronged was 'life's not fair'.

I'm stunned at how parents (when they have parents but that's a whole 'nuther conversation) act towards their kids today. Everyone's a winner, there are no losers, call the cops when a couple of 13 year olds squab on the ball field after school...These parents are in their late 30s to late 40s...just about my age and down. What made them such pussies?

The media.

the nerds have taken over. nerd skills are more profitable nowadays, so nerds are raising nerd children, with nerd values, nerd physicques and nerd beliefs.

it used to take brass balls to make money in this country. now it just takes nerd skills.

I am a 25-year-old nerd and I loved dodgeball. Wasn't the best, wasn't the worst, but I got out there and kicked some ass.

We played a game in middle school that we called "Ethiopian Escape".take a soccer field and ~75 kids.lay out squares with cones in all 4 corners of the field. place 5 soccer balls each in 2 of the squares.the remaining 2 squares are the "jail".

also lay out a 5 yard wide "no-man's land" over the center line.

the goal was to get all of the soccer balls onto your side of the field.

crossing into enemy territory meant you could be tagged. if you were tagged, you went to jail. if you made it to the soccer balls, you could stay inside the square without fear of being tagged, but were at risk as soon as you left (carrying at most a single soccer ball)

tagging a person on your own team who was in the jail set them free (they got a free walk back to their home side). Prisoners were allowed to make a chain towards the center line, so long as 1 person kept a foot inside the jail, and only a single person needed to be touched to set everyone free.

AngryJailhouseFistfark:PC LOAD LETTER: Dodgeball was validation for bullies. I see some folks think it was all fun and that those who got pounded "deserved it". And people wonder why kids want to kill their classmates. I know I did, and I am still not exactly sure how I am not in prison for life.

Now as an adult, I would LOVE to play it. Mainly because I am rather strong and have a massive tolerance for pain.

This came to mind immediately upon reading your tale.[joeskythedungeonbrawler.files.wordpress.com image 320x240]

"Look at the strength in your body, the desire in your heart, I gave you this! "

It was the dodgeball that made you strong, that made you impervious to pain. Embrace it.

You don't have adult dodgeball leagues? In my hometown it's a pretty popular adult sport. I used to play on a team until my buddy spiral fractured his arm throwing it. Now I do adult kickball twice a week and softball in the summers.

It's funny, all the games they are trying to eliminate in gym classes now are exploding in the adult populations almost simultaneously because many of us missed those sports. My town, Rochester, NY, has the largest adult kickball league in the nation (over 5000 players) for a reason - namely we like to drink and have fun.

groppet:sigdiamond2000: Dancin_In_Anson: ManateeGag: when I was growing up, dodge ball was hardly a team sport. there was no team work, no helping each other out. there was a lot of "every man for himself" on both sides of the line.

We played with tennis balls too. Nowadays I think they'd call in grief counselors to share our feelings about some of the bruising we took.

I brought this up in a conversation with a group of my old high school classmates last year. The catalyst was this article. Now, most of my classmates' kids are getting into the late teen age range but there are still a few who started late. My question was when did we become such shiatty parents where we were so overly concerned about our kids and why?

I'm almost 40. When I was a kid in the summertime, I would basically disappear, every day, between 8 AM and 10 PM, going pretty much anywhere I wanted to and I'd come home dirty, injured, and exhausted. Every day.

Now, my nieces and nephews are never, ever more than 10 feet away from their parents and are never outside. Whenever one of them somehow wanders away from their invisible umbilical cord, their parents are practically on the phone to the police.I don't understand what happened either.

Yeah in the summertime the only time you would see me at home was for lunch. Sometimes we were so dirty when we got back from whatever we were doing mom would turn the hose on us before she let us in the house.

We played Nuke 'Em a lot in gym class when I was in middle school (87-90). Basically 15 people on each side of a volleyball net. One person would throw the ball over the net, and if someone catches it, then the person who threw it is out. If it hits the floor whoever's closest to the ball is out.

KyngNothing:NutWrench: I_Am_Weasel: As I recall when I was in school, it was referred to as "murder ball"

They called it, "smear the queer (with the ball)" when I was a kid. I have no idea why: none of us knew what a queer was.

See for us, "smear the queer" was basically "group + 1 rugby" - the entire group would try and tackle the person with the ball, until they gave up, and threw it up in the air, for everyone to try and get. You could also get tackled if you gave up too easily, or didn't try to get the free ball hard enough.

(northern MD, 1980s)

Same in Michigan.

In high school, we played a variant of this, which took place in a hallway. I don't recall anyone ever making it all the way down the hallway.

All this fuss over one measly, little, mass-murder spree? Some people.

This thread was very heartening to read with so many basically level headed people with a good sense of playfulness and very few whiny social agenda types venting their high school frustrations of failure.

I graduated high school in 1999. As a California school, mine went crazy a bit earlier than the average.Iron-clad rule: Any two students involved in a fight are to be punished equally.So... when a kid walked up and punched me in the face because someone told him I had hit on his girlfriend (Completely untrue, I was a library nerd), I reported it, I got suspended! Why? "You must have done something to provoke him."

And of course, when the bullies learned that, it got far worse. If you were a 'good student' you couldn't defend yourself, because you'd get in far more trouble (proportionately) than the bully who hit you.

When I was a kid, dodgeball was great. I knew it would be a good PE day when the coach said it was dodgeball day. And no one got farking hurt!!! The best was when it got too cold to go outside for recess (-20 or colder) and we would go to the gym for recess it would be a class vs class dodgeball game. When the district banned dodgeball for some asinine reason that winter there really wasn't another game that could be played in the gym that was an entire class against another entire class. So it became sitting in the bleachers while watching five select students from one class play basket ball against five students from another class. Dull enough to make us willing to play outside at -30.

Pocket Ninja:There was also Prison Dodgeball (where team members were "taken prisoner" after being hit and could be freed to rejoin your team in what basically amounted to hostage exchanges);

We had something like this, except we called it "Jailbreak." Played in an indoor basketball court, with one team staying on each half and throwing at each other. If you got hit, you had to go sit in the "jail," which was the freethrow box in the opposite team's side. If someone managed to hit the opposing team's backboard, then all the "prisoners" from their team would be freed. Game ends when one side is 100% jailed.

No idea if they're still playing it at my middle school, but my old boy scout troop was still playing it when I last visited in 2011.

We played a variant of dodgeball in school, and it was brutal. It's been 35 years or so, and I don't remember what it was called (trenchball, maybe?). There were no sides...the entire gym was in play for a massive free-for-all. The whole class would spread out in the gym, and the coaches would throw about 10 of those heavy rubber balls onto the floor. Since you've got multiple people scrambling for the same ball, the guy who got there second was farked, because the guy who got there first had a free head shot at a range of about 2 feet and would absolutely obliterate you. Generally, half the class was lying on the sidelines within the first 20 seconds, and then the game settled in. The strategy became to decide if you could make it to a loose ball before someone else, and if not head the other direction fast. As the herd thinned more, inevitably one of the stronger players would gravitate towards the phalanx of girls cowering in the corner and commit genocide on them with extreme prejudice. After the game, everyone would go out on the floor and pick up all the glasses, retainers, shoes, etc. that were strewn about and do it again. When the coaches announced that we were playing trenchball, about 20 percent of the class was ecstatic, and the other 80 percent wished they were home with the flu...the fear was palpable. God I loved that game.

We played outrageous, engrossing games of Capture the Flag as kids/teenagers. Typically, the game started at dusk and ran an hour or two after dark.

If you're not familiar: playing "field" is divided into two sides. This could be a playground, a whole neighborhood, or, the best for me, a rural 500 acre summer camp (co-ed, 80 other kids same age). Each side has a flag, secured at the rear of the team's territory. There is a jail on each side. The goal of the game is to sneak across (or bum-rush), grab the opposing team's flag, and get the flag back across to your side without being caught. If you crossed enemy lines and got tagged, you had to go to the enemy jail. Once in jail, a member of your own team could cross the lines, and if not caught, could tag you and set you free from jail.

It is a great game for large groups. We had such a blast playing that game as kids.

This text is now purple:Carn: But seriously, those grenade shaped water balloons that could be filled humongous and broke easy. Man they were awesome.

Pshaw.[thetoyzone.com image 280x280]Did you know that at 75-mph, water balloons will whistle through the air? Or that they can put a hole in a Baby Grand piano?

We had an incident in high school during band camp where one of these was employed and an innocent bystand (another student) happened to accidentally walk through the blast zone. He got nailed right in the solar plexus from about 100 yards and he went down hard. He was alright, mostly knocked the wind out of him and bruised. I'm sure it hurt like hell. No one was arrested.

Am I the only one here who played crab soccer on rainy days? That was sweet. They'd herd all the PE classes into the big gymnasium and haul out this ENORMOUS ball. Everyone had to get down on hands and feet, facing upwards like a crab. Split the huge group into two teams, with each assigned a wall. Points were scored by moving the ball far enough to hit the opposing wall, with the only rule being that at least three limbs had to be touching the ground at all times (i.e. you could use only one foot or hand at a time to move the ball, or any other part of your body). Everyone was potentially offense or defense at any time. Much screaming and climbing over bodies ensued.

If you want an aerobic sport that doesn't actually require athletic ability - in fact, it pretty much levels the playing field - and allows players to be as team-oriented or solo as they like, it's hard to beat that. As a teenage runt with no hand-eye coordination and very little overall athletic ability, I really enjoyed that I could crab-scuttle with the best of them.

/which is to say, we all sucked equally, and the ball was pretty much in control of whether it hit the wall

AngryJailhouseFistfark:PC LOAD LETTER: Dodgeball was validation for bullies. I see some folks think it was all fun and that those who got pounded "deserved it". And people wonder why kids want to kill their classmates. I know I did, and I am still not exactly sure how I am not in prison for life.

Now as an adult, I would LOVE to play it. Mainly because I am rather strong and have a massive tolerance for pain.

This came to mind immediately upon reading your tale.[joeskythedungeonbrawler.files.wordpress.com image 320x240]

"Look at the strength in your body, the desire in your heart, I gave you this! "

It was the dodgeball that made you strong, that made you impervious to pain. Embrace it.

This text is now purple:KyngNothing: NutWrench: I_Am_Weasel: As I recall when I was in school, it was referred to as "murder ball"

They called it, "smear the queer (with the ball)" when I was a kid. I have no idea why: none of us knew what a queer was.

See for us, "smear the queer" was basically "group + 1 rugby" - the entire group would try and tackle the person with the ball, until they gave up, and threw it up in the air, for everyone to try and get. You could also get tackled if you gave up too easily, or didn't try to get the free ball hard enough.

(northern MD, 1980s)

Same in Michigan.

In high school, we played a variant of this, which took place in a hallway. I don't recall anyone ever making it all the way down the hallway.